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View Poll Results: Should The US Govt. Bail Out the US Auot Industry? | |||
YES - Bail Them Out! | 11 | 17.74% | |
NO - Let them Fail! | 51 | 82.26% | |
Voters: 62. You may not vote on this poll |
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11-18-2008, 10:08 PM | #73 | |
rarer than JDM -1 of 1!
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Quote:
Last edited by anonymous user; 11-18-2008 at 10:30 PM. |
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11-18-2008, 10:34 PM | #74 |
rarer than JDM -1 of 1!
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You know, sometimes it's hard being the worlds top economic powerhouse year in and year out. I mean we bailout all these countries in their times of need.
But when we need it, very few nations can help us, monetarily at least. Well, when the dollar is worth jack squat, i hope we can still all go on vacation and buy a $10 ice cream cone, or a $10 cup of starbucks coffee. |
11-19-2008, 03:55 AM | #75 | ||
Banned
Drives: 2008 Yaris Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 1,034
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Quote:
Might interest you to know that Carnegie had to import workers from Central and Eastern Europe. Native born Americans refused to work in his mills. Probably because they were unsafe and because of the "turns system", where you showed up for work every twelve hours and if the Foreman liked you he let you work for a turn. Unions, no doubt, are great bogeymen for the average worker. Each time that my employer was almost organized they ended up giving the Rank 'n File either more vacation days or better wages. Quote:
I've heard a rumor that they're gonna do this where I work now.... uh oh! The weird part about GM and their boss head count is that a lot of "Supervisory" tasks have been heavily automated out of existence by MIS and ERP systems. Paper pushers, for the most part. My first job out of school wouldn't exist today because your average Secretary with a bit of Visual Basic could have replaced me. What are they doing there? Probably on the payroll in case of a strike or because of some silly re-organization or maybe because of the Effect I mentioned before. Another reason, which is kind of sinister, is that GM may be abusing them by using their salary status to milk more hours out of them, while not treating them like Exempt employees. I saw this trick at my first job. The net result was that the "Bosses" got used for Fill In positions and because they were overworked made dumb decisions that gummed up the works. When things are going to hell that's when you have to think the most and be the most deliberate. Panic will kill you. Gene |
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11-19-2008, 04:19 AM | #76 | ||
Banned
Drives: 2008 Yaris Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 1,034
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Quote:
In my opinion Detroit started to accelerate down the bad path after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The interest income deduction for car loans was repealed. For some it now made more seen to lease a car than to buy one. Management, being opportunistic, decided to re-frame an Automobile from being a physical good to being a service. This encouraged more people to lease rather than purchase. Images of the Lease "experience" was what got advertised rather than this expensive, durable and concrete thing known as an automobile. Blonde girls with big boobs instead of technology and resale value, excitement instead of thrift and you can get a better one tomorrow. Detroit engineered cars to be tougher for the average Mechanic to work on so that the Dealers would get the Lion's share of service. They first wanted them to be easier to make but they also made them so that mechanics would need special tools to do the work economically. They put easily worn out and broken shit in bizarre places. Lesees would take the Company's car to the garage for its mandatory service, pay for the car by the mile, and once the term was up they'd lease another newer car. The Company took care of you, for a hefty fee. If the car was a piece of crap you'd lease a newer one. If it was really bad the Dealer would replace it, sorta. There was also this idiotic thing called "Planned Obsolescence". The Product was built to slowly disintegrate so that you'd HAVE to buy a new one. This concept is so against the idea of the Customer being in the driver's seat that it's not funny. Ford and his kingpins became the whole damn thing nickel and dimeing you at 200,000 miles so you had to buy another car - or if you leased you never saw this horror show. The Japanese and Koreans kept to the old model. A car was an expensive purchase. You bought and kept it. So it had to be of good quality and the better the quality the more customer satisfaction that came from it. Japan was selling to the world and most of the world is too poor to buy cheap goods. Japanese were very poor after the war ended and understood how hard it was to earn enough to buy a car. So did the Koreans. When Japanese got rich they remembered the climb up and how it felt to buy good products that honored their hard work. American manufacturers were selling to Americans, who were wealthy and did not have to be shrewd and careful with their money. We haven't seen hard times since the Great Depression and haven't had a war here since 1865. We've had it very easy and the world is an easy place. There was no tomorrow, only today and it's all new and shiny. Tomorrow finally came. I know that there are other causes and reasons but these are what come to me right now. Quote:
I was laid off in 2006. I had a new job two months later. I don't live in a wealthy part of the US, I'm over forty and I have a pretty diverse job history. So this was pretty damn quick. Motivation and a desire not to repeat the mistakes of the past where what drove me. Good luck to you. Gene |
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11-19-2008, 09:25 PM | #77 |
Small cars are a big deal
Drives: 2007 Yaris Liftback Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 3,144
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Thanks for the kind words, Gene. I am certainly NOT treating this like a vacation. I've loaded up on freelance work, which is great. Although I will say I don't miss getting up at 5:15 am for the time being.
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Subcompact Culture: The Small car blog |
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